WFP: NY-26 Residents ‘Did Us All A Solid’

The Working Families Party, which sent a team of canvassers to knock doors for Congresswoman-elect Kathy Hochul, is among those taking credit for helping propel her to victory.

The labor-backed party is also fully embracing the NY-26-as-Medicare-referendum storyline being pushed by the Democrats, taking this opportunity to urge the Dems to, as WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor put it in an email to supporters this morning, “use this victory well, and stand up for what we know is right.”

“The people were not fooled,” Cantor wrote. “Hochul got nearly 50% of the vote in a 4-way race, beating all expectations – including ours.”

“Middle-class and working-class citizens of Western New York, seniors and younger people alike, cast a vote for a better America today. In the words of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, the voters of the 26th CD were basically saying that “we all do better when we all do better.”

“They were not willing to buy the Ryan-Boehner-Pawlenty-Romney-Whoever view that we don’t actually have any obligations to one another, that we are just islands unto ourselves. Medicare is a promise, from one generation to the next, that all Americans deserve to be treated with dignity. Nothing more, but nothing less either.”

“The people of Western New York just did a huge solid for the whole country.”

Hochul ran on the Democratic and WFP lines, while Assemblywoman Jane Corwin had the Independence, Conservative and GOP lines. Jack Davis ran as a small-i independent on the TEA Party line, and Ian Murphy was the Green Party’s candidate. The unofficial results: Hochul, 48,530; Corwin, 43,836; Davis, 9,495; Murphy, 1,130.

Dave Weigel writes this morning about the so-called “spoiler” effect Davis had on the race, and concludes that theory isn’t all the GOP is making it out to be. He also touches on the long-standing division in the GOP – particularly upstate – which caused the emergence of a third-party candidate in the first place.